A wedding of the unknown

kind of them to have invited us

drunk next to the River Avon

or Afon Afon as we’d have had it

river river dancing in the humidity of marriage

and the hurdles of obligatory congestion

of most journeys we insist on making

I got a Kurdish haircut

in the town that's nearest to us

a place where Gruff Rhys was born

and Suggs spent some boy years

no sign of boyars

in the land of xenophobes

Xerxes unwelcome here

sell out sell you

sell laptop speakers

to Flemish speakers

no need to thin out the population

they willing self-destruct

through unwitting lifelong dependence

on pointless manoeuvres

including funerary rites

the rites of the wrong

the wrongs of the rites

what's on the box tonight?

I hope it's not Ray Winstone

playing The Sweeney’s Jack Regan

via a modern potty mouth

the age of the hard man

usurped by the age of the sneer

a deformity that was born

depleted of future character

guts and class

I ate chutney

I ate cheese

I chewed and inflated bubblegum

I spewed my foetus up

the worthies get asked to talk

to an audience about their work

and how they go about it

I have no feelings of resentment

and even less interest

let them jaw away

while I war away

a way to while away the war

build new homes for old people

excavate wider graves for fatter corpses

give the undertakers a different challenge

the diggers a more avaricious arc

and tomorrow's archaeologists

more to aim for

the dwindling prairies of our dreams

the bison the birds the ants the soil

disappearing out of shot

on a conveyor belt

in an unintelligent looting

and tidying up exercise

the toothless teeth

keep blades of grass as mementos

in an old Quality Street tin

BBC weather used the word toasty

to describe a forecast tonight

dumb dumb dumb

or scorchio even

the laziness of language

the soporific state of minds

and the tongues they fail to control

bequeath the schools

the colleges

the universities

to the dragonflies

the gnats and the mayflies

they’d learn something

and perhaps we’d at last learn something too

a wife killer on the phone

to a lawyer on TV

he wants out of prison

in the worst kind

of cynical middle class accent

ambivalent to the end

hog the limelight with purported education

a criminal is still a criminal

even with a finance sector CV

his wife was from near the river

I know so well

river of mine

thine shine sign

signal singularity

shove elocution lessons

into the sonic industrial ovens

and force the enablers

the coaches

the leadership figures

who want identifiable regional accents

to be scoured from the mouths of their utterers

to view and listen to this outcome

I have booked my ticket

in order to observe and ratify their discomfort

saltcotes and induction hobs

discounted gin but not export strength

seagulls on chimney pots

on an island came to from another

the stepping stones from which

we would not wish to escape

fast road outside

town of roundabouts

get away from nothing

never never get away with anything

just go round and round

in delirious Celtic knots

live for the sun

the ease the comfort it affords

but it continues to wrongfoot us

that amnesia of a half century

of disrupted summers

stalked by soaked darkness

the beaches

the choices

the smiles

the light

the sweat

give me heat

give me T-shirts

give me chilled drinks

give me extensive panoramas

give me a few weeks in which

to live unleashed